Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an Internet standards track protocol which is an application-level protocol for distribution of information in collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is a generic stateless protocol, which is a foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web. HTTP is a request/response protocol in which a client sends a request message to a server. The server, which provides resources such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) files and other content, returns a response message in response to a recipient who sent an earlier message. A message body of the response message may contain requested content.
Transfer encodings are values that are used to indicate an encoding transformation that has been applied to an entity-body in order to ensure safe transport through a network. The transfer encoding is a property of the message. One form of transfer encoding is “Chunked Transfer Encoding” (hereinafter, “chunked encoding”).
The chunked encoding modifies the body of a message in order to transfer the message as a series of chunks Each chunk may include an indication of the chunk's own size, followed by an optional trailer containing entity-header fields, which allow dynamically produced content to be transferred along with information necessary for the recipient to verify that the recipient has received the full message.